Bad sports, good sports: It has been a difficult week to be a Penn Stater

Posted on November 14th, 2011 by Alan Spoll

I have always managed to avoid covering the same story two weeks in a row, but the Penn State story has totally dominated the sports world’s news for the past week, so there is really no way around it. Since I wrote last, many things have happened. Legendary head coach Joe Paterno, assistant coach Mike McQueary, and university president Graham Spanier are all out, along with athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz. As a Penn Stater, this has been a very difficult week for me for a lot of reasons.

All week long, I have had to listen to the opinions of a huge variety of people. From television broadcasters, to radio announcers, to friends, to random strangers in the grocery store, everyone has something to say about this situation, regardless of how little they actually know about it. I suppose that’s not unusual – I imagine I am just more sensitive to it right now, considering my own emotional connection to the whole thing. I have noticed that the less informed someone is about this, the stronger his or her opinion seems to be. I have been trying to reconcile my protective feelings with the horror of the situation, and it has been a challenge. The key to it would seem to be understanding that human nature is far more complicated than we would like it to be.

I need to mention that I have idolized Joe Paterno for many years. I have admired him as a coach, as a man, and as a leader. Beyond this, the Penn State football program, and the school itself, for that matter, stand as something of a utopia for me. My time there was many years ago, but I have continued to go back on a regular basis, taking my wife and kids there for the opening football game each year. In my mind, it has represented honor, safety, and excellence. It is the last place in the world that I would have imagined something like this situation to have occurred. Make no mistake, I am horrified at what happened, from the actual sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky (do I have to say “alleged?”) to the cover-up by the administration and the coaching staff. I have three children myself, and can not even begin to imagine what those kids and their families have endured. I ache for them and hope that their lives have not been totally destroyed. At the same time, I find myself defending Paterno and Penn State itself when people bring the situation up to me. The people who were saying that Saturday’s game against Nebraska should have been called off infuriated me. Why punish the current players, who had nothing to do with any of this? Why punish the fans, who are trying to deal with an aspect of their world having been turned upside-down? Those are the people who would be most directly affected by shutting the games down.

My need to defend JoePa and the team seems to come from a deep-rooted need for things to remain normal. When thinking about this, I was remembering back to the awful week that followed September 11, 2001. The events of that day were so incomprehensible to me, my mind could not process the reality of the situation. I am a bit chagrined to admit that one thing I remember really well from that week was my incredible sadness and anger that the NFL canceled its slate of games for the week. I am sure that sounds bizarre, as a bunch of football games would seem to mean so little in the face of such catastrophic events. If you think about it, though, when the foundations of your world have been shaken, it would seem to make a lot of sense to latch on to any little thing that could provide a sense of normalcy. For me, football Sundays are something I count on and anticipate greatly. I needed those games so that I could believe that everything was going to be okay. Having that Sunday come and go without a single game being played greatly magnified my feelings of confusion and instability. My anger at the idea that the Penn State-Nebraska game could be canceled comes from the exact same place. I needed the game to be played, just as I need to continue to hang on to my belief in Joe Paterno.

As time goes on, we will find out a lot more about this story. It is likely that more victims will come forward, and we will learn more details about who knew what and when. It is my hope that Joe will be vindicated, and that his legacy will be restored. I have no idea if this is a realistic hope in any way. I write all of this to explain that those of us who are standing behind Penn State and Joe Paterno are not, in any way, dismissing the crimes of Jerry Sandusky or the responsibility that other people had to do whatever they could to prevent more people from being hurt. I am merely trying to explain why I feel the way I do. In the long run, Penn State will survive and will hopefully again become a place that people can believe in.

WE ARE

Bad sports, continued:

2) Joey Gratton, a powerboat racer, was critically injured in a wreck during the Key West World Championships on Friday.

3) Mike Smith, head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, made one of the most inexplicable decisions I can remember on Sunday during overtime of his team’s loss to the New Orleans Saints. The Falcons, who had gotten a field goal at the buzzer to send the game to overtime, had possession of the ball at their own 29-yard-line. It was 4th and inches, and there was still plenty of time on the clock. If you asked every other coach in football, each one of them would say, with no hesitation, that you punt in that situation. Instead, Smith decided to go for it. Just as shockingly, he called for a deep handoff to Michael Turner rather than a quarterback sneak. Turner was stopped, and New Orleans merely had to kick a field goal and go home with a win, which is exactly what they did. Stupid.

4) Jeffrey Kessler, the attorney for the NBA players union, stated on Monday that league commissioner David Stern was treating the players like “plantation workers.” He has since apologized.

5) Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos had quite a harrowing week. He was kidnapped from his home in Venezuela by gunmen on Wednesday and held for ransom. He was rescued late Friday.

6) Golfer and human train wreck John Daly had another eventful tournament this week. He had a meltdown on Thursday during the Australian Open, hitting seven balls into the water on the 11th hole. After the last of these, he stormed off the course and was subsequently dismissed from the tournament.

7) Terrence Jones, a star player for the University of Kentucky’s basketball team, was in a car accident on Friday along with teammate Stacey Poole. Their car was hit by a drunk driver. Luckily, neither was seriously injured.

8) The University of Oklahoma’s basketball program was hit with major sanctions this week for NCAA rules violations committed while the team was already on probation. The team will lose recruiting days, scholarships, and will have its probation extended to three years.

Good sports:

1) Louisville head basketball coach Rick Pitino won his 600th career game on Friday.

2) Track star Usain Bolt won his third Track and Field Athlete of the Year this week, tying a record held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.

3) The departure of so many college basketball stars after just a year or two in college has ruined the game, in many ways. I love when a team from a small school where the players tend to stick around beats one of the big schools where the same thing does not happen. This happened on Sunday, when Cleveland State traveled to Nashville to play Vanderbilt, who went into the game ranked 7th in the country. Cleveland State won by twelve.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

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Alan Spoll

Alan Spoll is a software quality assurance director from the suburbs of Philadelphia where he lives with his wonderful wife and children. He has spent his entire life as a passionate fan of the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, and Penn State. Recent Phillies success aside, you will understand his natural negativity. Follow me on Twitter - @DocAlan02